Karin Slaughter - Broken

He shook his head. “It’s not gonna work.”

Lena took some liberties with the truth. “Greta Barnes saw you give Tommy that beat-down. I bet that nurse of hers can tell some stories, too.”

He gave a strained laugh. “Call them in. Go ahead.”

“If I were you, I’d be careful.”

“You don’t see it.”

Lena stood up and wiped the grit off her pants. “All I see is a tired old drunk.”

He struggled to sit up. His breathing was labored. “You were always so sure you were right that you couldn’t see the truth if it was standing there in front of you.”

She took the badge off her belt and threw it on the floor beside him. The Glock she carried was her own, but the bullets belonged to the county. Lena ejected the magazine and thumbed out each round. The bullets gave off satisfying pings as they hit the tile floor.

He said, “It’s not over.”

She pulled back the slide and ejected the last round in the chamber. “It is for me.”

The door was stuck. She had to yank it open. Carl Phillips stood at the back of the squad room. He tipped his hat at Lena as she walked out of the office.

Marla swiveled in the chair, her arms crossed over her large chest as she tracked Lena’s progress through the room. She leaned down and pressed the buzzer for the gate. “Good riddance.”

There should have been some kind of pull, some kind of loyalty, that made Lena look back, but she walked out into the parking lot, inhaling the wet November air, feeling like she had finally freed herself from the worst kind of prison.

She took a deep breath. Her lungs shook. The weather had cleared up a little, but a strong, cold wind dried the sweat on her face. Her vision was sharp. There was a buzzing in her ears. She could feel her heart rattling in her chest, but she forced herself to keep moving.

Her Celica was parked at the far end of the lot. She looked up Main Street. The waning sun was making a brief appearance, giving everything a surreal blue cast. Lena wondered how many days of her life had been spent going up and down this same miserable strip. The college. The hardware store. The dry cleaners. The dress shop. It all seemed so small, so meaningless. This town had taken so much from her—her sister, her mentor, and now her badge. There was nothing else that she could give. Nothing left to do but start over.

Across the street, she saw the Heartsdale Children’s Clinic. Hareton Earnshaw’s billion-dollar Beemer was parked in the lot, taking up two spaces.

Lena passed her Celica and kept walking across the street. Old man Burgess waved at her from the front window of the dry cleaners. Lena waved back as she climbed the hill to the clinic. Her hand was killing her. She didn’t think she could wait to go to the hospital tomorrow morning.

During Sara’s tenure, the clinic had always been well maintained. Now, the place was starting to go downhill. The driveway hadn’t been pressure-washed in years. The paint on the trim was chipped and faded. Leaves and debris clogged the gutters so bad that water flowed down the side of the building.

Lena followed the signs to the rear entrance. There were cheap stepping-stones laid in the dead grass. At one time, there had been wildflowers back here. Now there was just a mud track leading to the creek that ran through the back of the property. The torrential rains had turned it into a fast-flowing river that looked ready to flood the clinic. Erosion had taken hold. The channel was wider now, at least fifteen feet across and half as deep.

She pressed the buzzer by the back door and waited. Hare had been renting space in the building since Sara left town. Lena had to think that Sara would’ve never let her cousin work alongside her when she owned the clinic. They were close, but everybody knew Hare was a different kind of doctor from Sara. He saw it as a job, whereas Sara saw it as a calling. Lena was hoping this was still the case, that a doctor like Hare would view her as a billable office visit instead of a blood enemy.

Lena pressed the buzzer again. She could hear the bell ringing inside along with the quiet murmur of a radio. She tried to flex her hand. There was less movement now. Her fingers were fat and swollen. She pulled back her sleeve and groaned. Red streaks traced up her forearm.

“Shit,” Lena groaned. She put her hand to her cheek. She was burning up. Her stomach was sour. She hadn’t felt right for the last two hours, but it all seemed to be catching up with her at once.

Her phone started to ring. Lena saw Jared’s number. She gave the buzzer by the door one last push before answering. “Hey.”

“Is this a bad time?”

She paced in front of the door. “I just quit my job.”

He laughed like she had told an unbelievable joke. “Really?”

She leaned her back against the wall. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

“Does that mean you’d lie about other things?”

He was kidding, but Lena felt her heart drop when she thought about how all of this could’ve blown up in her face. “I want to get out of town as soon as possible.”

“All right. We’ll start packing tonight. You can move in with me and we’ll figure out later what you’re going to do.”

Lena stared at the river. She could hear the rush of the current. The sound was like boiling water in her ears. Even though the rain had stopped, the river was still rising. She conjured the image of a huge wave crashing down the hill, flooding out the street and taking away the police station.

“Lee?” Jared asked.

“I’m all right—” Her voice caught. She couldn’t start crying now or she’d never stop. “I should be home in an hour or two.” Her throat started to tighten. “I love you.”

She ended the call before he could answer. Lena looked at her watch. There was a doc-in-the-box in the drugstore over in Cooperstown. Maybe she could find a physician’s assistant who needed some cash and wouldn’t ask questions. She pushed away from the wall just as the back door opened.

Lena said, “Oh.”

“I didn’t see your car out front.”

“I’m parked across the street.” Lena held up her hand, showing the dangling Band-Aids. “I … uh … kind of have a problem I can’t take to the hospital.”

There was none of the expected reluctance. “Come on in.”

The smell of bleach hit Lena as she walked into the building. The cleaning staff had been thorough, but the stench made her stomach turn.

“Go into exam one. I’ll be right there.”

“All right,” Lena agreed.

Being in the doctor’s office seemed to give her body permission to hurt. Her hand was throbbing with every heartbeat. She couldn’t pull her fingers into a fist. There was a high-pitched noise in her ears. Then another one. She realized she was hearing sirens.

Lena bypassed the exam room and went to the front of the building to see what was going on. The pocket door to the front office took some coaxing to open. The blinds were drawn, the room dark. She turned on the lights and saw the source of the odor.

Two gallon jugs of bleach were on the desk. Leather gloves soaked in a stainless steel bowl. Cotton swabs and paper towels littered the floor. A wooden baseball bat was laid out on a sheet of brown craft paper. Blood was embedded in the letters around the Rawlings logo.

Lena put her hand to her gun, but she was too late. She felt a drop of blood trickle down her neck before her body registered the pain of the cold steel of a knife pressing into her skin.

CHARLIE REED BOUNDED DOWN THE DORM STAIRS WITH a smile showing under his mustache. He was in a white clean suit, covered head to toe in Tyvek. “Glad you’re here. We were just about to start the magic.”